Forum:Wiki categorization - how much is too much?
I've recently undertaken an effort to increase the usefulness of this wiki by adding some additional categories into which the models can be separated. My initial effort was to categorize by pickup configuration. While I'm not sure I've yet tagged every article, I think that effort is just about complete. The thinking behind that was that when someone is looking for a guitar, one common criteria they might use to narrow down their search is the type of pickups — these categories allow a user to easily see which models use which configuration without trying to look at every model or trying to parse model numbers. My next thought was to add categories based on the country in which the guitar is made. My thinking here was that there is a certain hierarchy within Ibanez guitars with the guitars made in Japan and the US at the top (most expensive, highest quality standards), with the Korean-made instruments below that, followed by those made in China and Indonesia. As such, a particularly discriminating user might want to consider only those models manufactured in Japan, for example. Rather than add these categories manually (as I did for the pickup configuration categories), this time around I leveraged the template's "made" attribute. Based on this the category is automatically assigned. The advantage of this is that an editor doesn't have to worry about adding the category manually when adding a new model article. The downside is that there is some maintenance that needs to be done for those models which are produced in more than one country (see Category:Guitar models with unknown country of manufacture). After adding the country of origin categories, I received some feedback that perhaps the value of these categories is outweighed by the complexity they add. It's been pointed out that the wiki is NOT a database, and shouldn't be used or expected to perform as such. On the other hand, if we can find ways to make the wiki more useful to people (without overwhelming complexity) then perhaps we should explore it. It's also been pointed out that many of the existing categories in use on the wiki (e.g. Category:Guitar models by year of new finish or Category:Guitar models by year of introduction) may also be of limited utility to many (most?) users. So I throw the questions out there to the community: *How much value does this sort of categorization have to you? *How much categorization is too much? *Are there any particular categories that you would find useful? *Do you find value in the "by country of manufacture", "by year of new finish" or "by year of introduction" categories? Please share your opinions freely (you won't hurt my feelings) and let's try to reach consensus on a way forward. Thanks! \m/ Deejayk (talk) 23:52, April 19, 2016 (UTC) :It's a good summary of the current state of the wiki, with a very diplomatic way to present things :) :To me (personal-I-think-2-cts-point-of-view), categories like "New finish in 2009" or "Upgrade in 2009" are not useful. At all. But "New in 2009" is (for the sake of knowing how many new models were introduced this year). Then, "Made in Japan", "HSH pickup config" and the rest do have some utility but... some people may also want to do some search based on categories like "Wizard 2 neck" or "Mahogany body" or "Fixed bridge" or "Flamed maple top", etc. What I want to say, is that EVERY single line in the spec-table could/should have a category at the bottom of the page if we go to this far extreme. I hope we won't go there and that's basically the reason why, to me, wiki =/= database. :If we take into account that "normal people" can't see the categories at the bottom of the pages (unless you have a registered account and you log-in) it is safe to say that categories are mainly used by wiki-editors: and yes it is dam useful to make a search within a specific category to check if everything is in good order. :So how do people browse this wiki? I can't speak in the name of everybody, but I think the search-bar at the top of wiki is the most common way to navigate. Second, the top-menu with guitar models etc. Maybe it's even more obvious, viewers come to this wiki simply because they Google the name of the guitar, and Ibanez Wikia (almost) always comes first. Categories are not your average-Joe/Dudebro way of navigating since it demands some knowledge of the wiki meta (I don't want to sound rude, it's just a way to present things). :I'm sorry I can't give a definite answer to the question, but I think categories main purpose could/should be to make things easier to wiki-editors, since most of "normal people" don't even know this feature - except the few occurrences where there is a nice link to a category in the middle of the page, like: For a list of all RG models, see RG models. :If people, many people could tell us what they want, what they need, what they like or not, it would GREATLY help us. Please share your opinions! (I won't bite either) --KainTGC (talk) 16:41, April 20, 2016 (UTC)